Jim Zarroli

Jim Zarroli is a business reporter for NPR News, based at NPR's New York bureau.

He covers economics and business news including fiscal policy, the Federal Reserve, the job market and taxes

Over the years, he's reported on recessions and booms, crashes and rallies, and a long string of tax dodgers, insider traders and Ponzi schemers. He's been heavily involved in the coverage of the European debt crisis and the bank bailouts in the United States.

Prior to moving into his current role, Zarroli served as a New York-based general assignment reporter for NPR News. While in this position he covered the United Nations during the first Gulf War. Zarroli added to NPR's coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the London transit bombings and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Before joining the NPR in 1996, Zarroli worked for the Pittsburgh Press and wrote for various print publications.

Monsanto has rejected a $62 billion takeover bid from Bayer as "incomplete and financially inadequate," but left the door open to further negotiations with the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant.

Matt Coy likes to tell people how he went 47 years without voting. Not once. Not even for high school class president.

But there he was last Friday at an early-voting center at a county parks building in Columbus, Ind., excitedly preparing to cast his ballot for Republican Donald Trump.

"I've lost three factory jobs in the last 10 years, to go to China or go to Mexico or go to somewhere out of the country. We're losing our jobs to everybody else. We need 'em back. I think he can do it," Coy said.

Three years after an eight-story factory building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing more than 1,100 people and injuring 2,000 others, union leaders and relatives of the victims say not enough has been done to compensate those affected.

"Three years have passed and still we don't see any justice. No one has been held to account for one of history's worst man-made disasters," union leader Abul Hossain said at a commemorative protest at the site of the disaster.

Top executives at the biggest Wall Street firms would have to wait four years to collect most of their bonus pay and could be forced to return the money in the event of wrongdoing, under proposed rules unveiled by federal regulators.

The rules, which were released Thursday by the National Credit Union Administration for public comment, say senior executives at firms worth more than $250 billion must wait to collect 60 percent of their bonus pay.

Executives at firms valued at $50 billion to $250 billion would have to wait three years to receive half their bonuses.

The European Union has filed new antitrust charges against Google, alleging that it uses its Android operating system to impose unfair conditions on makers of mobile devices.

"

We found that Google pursues an overall strategy on mobile devices to protect and expand its dominant position in internet search," Margrethe Vestager, the EU's commissioner for competition, said in a statement today.

Sen. Bernie Sanders says that if he is elected president in November, one of his first acts in office would be to begin breaking up the large financial institutions that pose a grave risk to the economy.

But there's a problem with that idea: It's not clear the president has the legal authority to break up the banks.

"It's not something the president can do. It's not even something the Treasury can do," says Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics.

The leaking of more than 11 million documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca earlier this month cast new light on the arcane world of offshore shell companies, long a favorite hiding place for the very rich.

Poor people who reside in expensive, well-educated cities such as San Francisco tend to live longer than low-income people in less affluent places, according to a study of more than a billion Social Security and tax records.

Poor people who reside in expensive, well-educated cities such as San Francisco tend to live longer than low-income people in less affluent places, according to a study of more than a billion Social Security and tax records.

U.S. companies will find it much harder to reduce their taxes by merging with foreign firms under new rules introduced by the Obama administration, and that's already throwing the fate of one big deal in doubt.

Shares of Allergan were down sharply Tuesday, as investors questioned whether its $150 billion merger with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer will still take place.

Over the past few decades, New York City has become safer, richer and a lot more crowded than it used to be. All over Manhattan these days, you can see apartment buildings going up — and yet finding a decent place to live has become tougher than ever.

"We are in an official housing crisis, period, in New York City," says Alicia Glen, New York City's deputy mayor for housing and development. "Our population is growing much more rapidly than our housing stock and so we have a really imbalanced housing market."

Like other presidential candidates before him, Donald Trump is under pressure to release his tax returns. Former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney (who faced tax disclosure issues of his own) even suggested this week that Trump was refusing to do so because they contain a "bombshell."

At Thursday's Republican debate in Houston, Trump explained that he cannot release his returns because he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

The most prosperous parts of the U.S. have recovered nicely from the 2008 financial crisis, but many other places remain mired in high unemployment and poverty, according to a report measuring wealth levels by ZIP code.

"The United States is still a land of opportunity for many. But when it comes to life outcomes, geography is too often destiny," says a report from the Economic Innovation Group, a research organization.

Too-big-to-fail banks are generating plenty of anger from the public, but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the real risks to the financial system lie in the vast, lightly regulated corners of the economy called shadow banks.

Under fire for her ties to Wall Street, Clinton increasingly has talked about the need to crack down on the hedge funds, private equity firms, money market funds and derivatives traders that perform many of the same functions as banks without being regulated the same way.

U.S. health regulators acknowledged they miscalculated the amount of formaldehyde emitted from some of Lumber Liquidators' laminated floor products. Shares of the company fell sharply Monday on the news.

The Centers for Disease Control And Prevention says the risk of cancer is three times higher than it previously estimated, and it strongly urged Lumber Liquidators customers to take steps to reduce exposure to the substance. The company no longer sells the Chinese-made, laminate products.

Tickets to the most popular concerts and other live events are often hard to find because of abusive practices by vendors who illegally use computer programs called bots to grab them up, according to a report released by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

In some cases, tickets to live events sell out within minutes, only to appear right away at enormous markups on sites such as StubHub, according to the report, which calls for major reform to the ticketing process.

The Federal Reserve has decided to keep its benchmark interest rate where it is, even as Fed officials expressed somewhat more caution about global economic conditions.

In a statement issued after the end of policymakers' two-day meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee said the federal funds rate would stay at 25-50 basis points, where it was set at the Fed's December meeting.